The number of people using cellular telephones has dramatically increased in the United States and foreign countries during the last decade. Yet their remains one segment of the U.S. and foreign population that still shies away from their use—the elderly. This admittedly imprecise term is not intended to refer merely to those who are approximately 80 years and over but even to those who are approximately 60 years old and over. Although there are many reasons for this phenomenon at least several reasons have to do with the physical nature of the cellular telephone.
A general reason is that cellular telephones do not work like “regular” land-line telephone. They work like a computer. Cellular telephones have several function keys that offer several different modes of operation. Only one of the modes is dialing a telephone number. Others include various acts of manipulating data such as storing a telephone number, retrieving a telephone number, recharging the telephone etc. Even the dialing mode is different for cellular telephones. As with a computer, one has to first enter the data or “send” the entered telephone number to the processor before the dialing actually occurs. The need to have to enter or “send” the dialed number to the processor is unfamiliar and odd for someone used to a regular telephone. As a result of the diverse functions, one's familiarity with how a plain land-line telephone works does not afford enough education as to how a cellular telephone works.
One specific reason is that cellular telephones have a feature wherein the same “CLEAR” button for shutting off the conversation to re-dial a new number is often the same key for shutting off the telephone. Often one push of the “CLEAR” key clears the dialed number from memory and affords the user the ability to dial a new number whereas either a harder press or a second press of the same key shuts off the whole telephone. This feature has a strong tendency to be “user-unfriendly” to the elderly—first of all it is too hard to push the key and second of all it is confusing that the same key does two different things.
A second specific reason many elderly individuals have shied away from the use of cellular telephones is that the manual act of dialing the telephone is harder. This is due to the small (and with each new design getting even smaller) size of the keypad keys representing the integers to be dialed. It is simply hard to see the keys. The other problem is that the keys to be dialed are close together and accidentally pressing the adjacent and wrong key occurs too frequently.
Related to this is the fact that when it does happen that the wrong number key has been pressed, the manner of undoing that mistake is not similar to the response to having mistakenly pressed the wrong digit of a plain land-line telephone. In that case, you hang up and redial. When a mistake is made while dialing a cellular telephone, do you shut off the phone and start again? Do you locate a button for erasing the last pressed digit, and if so, which button?. Do you restart the dialing mode? If you are a regular user of a cellular telephone you know the answer—you push the “CLEAR” button, assuming you can find it amidst all the tiny function buttons. If you are elderly or another type of individual who is not familiar with cellular telephones but is using one, you may not immediately know the solution and may be stymied and frustrated. Even if you learn about the “CLEAR” button, the fact that that same button/key is also used to shut off the entire telephone makes it confusing. The additional fact that this button is probably tiny is also a discomfort.
Moreover, while the “display” feature of a cellular telephone is designed to make it easier to avoid hitting the wrong key and letting you see what you are dialing or what have dialed, this solution to the discomfort is not effective since in most cellular telephones the area of the display is itself too small to achieve this purpose. Furthermore, the fact that something you dialed is displayed and you can see what you did does not necessarily render the process of dialing from small keys any less uncomfortable or confusing.
In the rush to offer more and more features to the cellular telephone users, and due to the urge to offer smaller and smaller cellular telephones, the above drawbacks of cellular telephone have been created and these drawbacks have caused a significant segment of the market, namely the elderly, those whose dexterity, hearing and/or sight are poor, to shy away from their use. While it might only be a minority segment of the purchasing public that view these characteristics as sufficient drawbacks that they refrain from using cellular telephones, the absolute numbers are very significant.
The present invention provides a cellular telephone that overcomes the disadvantages of the prior art and provides additional advantages.